stcynic
Posts by this author
July 10, 2006
Speaking of D. James Kennedy, a reader left a link in a comment below about the time-honored practice of tracking down creationist misquotations. Anyone involved in the evolution debate has had to do this at least once. A creationist gives you some juicy quote from a famous scientist that you know…
July 10, 2006
Dembski has had a habit in the past of posting things on his blog that are reported to him by anonymous colleagues. It's forced him to have to apologize a time or two when it turns out that the facts aren't quite correct (you may recall the anonymous colleague who told him about seeing Kevin Padian…
July 10, 2006
Here's STACLU's latest exercise in irrationality, a post titled NY Times Paints US Military as a Bunch of Racists. The post is written by Ian from Expose the Left, but all he really does is expose his own lack of reasoning skills. He's up in arms about this article in the NY Times, which points out…
July 10, 2006
The Pope visited Spain, where gay marriage was recently legalized, on Saturday. He delivered an address about the importance of protecting traditional marriage from...well, he doesn't actually say what. Some of his statements are just baffling to me. Can he really not realize how empty and…
July 9, 2006
This time it's about his false claims about George Washington. For the 8 people who actually care about our ongoing project to debunk the nonsense about the founding fathers that is produced in astounding volumes by the religious right, this post is worth reading.
July 9, 2006
John Amato at Crooks and Liars has a very compelling question: why isn't the administration and the conservative blogosphere and media attacking the NY Daily News for reporting leaked information on an ongoing investigation about the alleged subway bombers in New York? Here's the original report:…
July 9, 2006
I know, that's hardly worth noting. But it's just amazing to watch someone be so completely disingenuous in making an argument. He can't be dense enough not to realize how weak the arguments are. In a new comment on the thread over at Larry's blog where he endorsed the bullying and intimidation of…
July 8, 2006
Our old pal Larry Darby is back, and if you thought the term "Judeo-Christian" was meaningless, wait till you see his new term: "Judeo-Marxist". He released a statement to the press saying that he's now a Christian (at least he accepts Jesus' moral teachings - I accept many of them too, but that…
July 8, 2006
Space.com reports on new satellite data showing that Noah's Ark might be on Ararat itself, hundreds of miles from the spot in Iran where Bob Cornuke says he found Noah's Ark. Maybe Noah wasn't the only one with that "build a big boat" idea?
July 8, 2006
The state of Washington may soon not be alone in its ban on internet gaming. Republicans in the House are pushing a bill to make that ban nationwide. The bill has made it through committee and will be coming to a floor vote this summer. And predictably, they're trying to sell the bill with two…
July 8, 2006
This comment is rather blunt even for someone of DaveScot's loutishness. Speaking of the Dover plaintiffs, he endorses bullying their children and committing vandalism to drive them out of town:
I hope someone keeps track of the 11 parents and their children. Everyone in Dover knows damn well that…
July 7, 2006
I'm in the process of moving thousands of posts from my old blog over to here and I just got an email from a reader who gets email alerts whenever I post saying he's getting bombarded with emails telling him I have a new post. That was not something I had even considered, since I've never had an…
July 7, 2006
The TV news shows are all abuzz with rumors over why no pictures have surfaced of Tom Cruise's baby with his handmaid fiance Katie Holmes. One rumor has it that Cruise won't sell the pictures unless he gets more than was offered for the pics of Brangelina's baby. That's plausible. Another rumor has…
July 7, 2006
David Post has an excellent, uh, post at Volokh about how the media casually explains daily fluctuations in the stock and bond markets without a shred of evidence to support them:
Pretty much every day, in pretty much every newspaper in the country, there is a story that goes something like this […
July 7, 2006
I have written probably a couple dozen essays taking the religious right to task for their constant misquoting of the founding fathers, and for sometimes just plain passing on false quotes attributed to them. I'm disappointed to see the same thing done in this post on Talk2Action by an advocate of…
July 7, 2006
One of the most fascinating aspects of the Hamdan case was that it was argued not by a prominent legal scholar or law professor, nor by a private defense attorney, but by a military lawyer from the JAG office, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift. Think about the position this put him in as an officer, taking a…
July 6, 2006
From CardPlayer magazine's live updates from the $5000 buy-in No Limit Hold Em tournament:
Phil Hellmuth raises to $75,000 preflop. Eugene Todd reraises to $220,000 total. Hellmuth asks Todd, "Are you trying to donk off your stack with ace jack?". Hellmuth proceeds to fold and shows A-Q. Todd…
July 6, 2006
Those good folks at Worldview Weekend have given me yet another gift in the form of this column by Ralph Barker, the first in a two part series entitled UFOs and the Gospel of Christ. Barker claims to have seen his first UFO when he was 10 and that it "flew at very high altitudes and performed…
July 6, 2006
Agape Press has an article about Rees Lloyd's testimony in favor of HR 2679. As usual, it's chock full of half-truths and falsehoods. And as usual, STACLU cites it approvingly without bothering to correct any of those falsehoods. For instance:
The ACLU received half a million dollars from the…
July 6, 2006
Vanity Fair has an article about some of the revelations that have come out in the wake of the Duke Cunningham and Jack Abramoff scandals, and how it reveals the seedy side of Washington. The article only scratches the surface - bribes to get CIA and Pentagon contracts, free trips to lavish resorts…
July 6, 2006
A reader sent me a link to this blog post about two cases where mothers killed their children, both in Texas, and both convicted by juries. But one mother said that she did it because God told her to and therefore it wasn't wrong; the other said she did it because Satan told her to, but she knew…
July 6, 2006
Michael Shermer writes of a fascinating experiment on how the brain processes statements and claims about which one has a powerful attachment to the truth being a certain way. It may well illuminate the sort of irrational thinking driven by political partisanship. I'll post his description of the…
July 5, 2006
Christopher Hitchens has an engaging essay in opposition to an amendment banning flag burning. I particularly like this part:
I would perhaps be suspected of excess Fourth of July zeal if I said that the First Amendment is my life as well as the source of my living, but I swear that it would not be…
July 5, 2006
Back in my standup comic days, I had a really brutal routine I did about Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold (this was obviously while they were still married). Among other things, I said that at their wedding they should have been pronounced host and parasite instead of husband and wife. I also referred…
July 5, 2006
Continuing their crusade to insure that gay couples are punished as much as possible for being gay, the Thomas More Law Center has sued Michigan State University over their policy of providing health care benefits to gay couples employed by the university. This is the second such lawsuit the TMLC…
July 5, 2006
Bartholemew sent the information about what is going on in Indian River Schools in Deleware, where a Jewish family has been so badly harrassed that they had to leave town, to Jesus' General, who naturally ran with it (for those who don't know, Jesus' General is sort of the Stephen Colbert of the…
July 5, 2006
A young earth creationist, Tas Walker, has posted the first of what I expect will be many articles by creationists debunking the new claimed Noah's Ark site. What they have found is so obviously a natural rock formation that even creationist geologists can recognize it as such. As Walker notes, all…
July 5, 2006
If you didn't see it live on TV, you should see this transcript of Bill O'Reilly making a fool of himself while interviewing William Eskridge and Darren Spedale. They are the authors of a book called Gay Marriage for Better or For Worse: What We've Learned from the Evidence. O'Reilly claims to have…
July 5, 2006
Claude Vorhilon, better known as the head of the Raelian space cult, has had a libel suit he filed against a writer in Canada thrown out of court:
When laughing him off as a "scatterbrained swindler" and a "clown," an Ottawa columnist did not libel the man known as Rael, a Quebec Superior Court has…
July 4, 2006
And Piston fans lament. This is very bad for the Pistons and very good for the Bulls. I can't blame Ben for taking the deal. The Bulls were offering an additional $12 million over what the Pistons were willing to pay him. In the long run, that may end up being a wise move for Dumars to make, but…